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April Fools' 2010: Around the world

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People dressed as comic characters sing and dance during the opening of the Festival of Humor called Yumorina in the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Odessa, April 1. The Fools' Day Festival lasts for two days and is an official holiday in Odessa. Yevgeni Volokin/Reuters

Clowns perform during the traditional clowns march in central Kiev to mark Day of Fool on April 1. Sergei Supinsky/AFP/Newscom

Handout photo obtained on April 1 from the Statens Naturhistoriske Museum shows a mermaid skeleton placed on the rock where Copenhagen's famous 'Little Mermaid' statue habitually sits, as an April Fool joke. The statue is on its way to Shanghai for the World Expo. AFP/Newscom

Pink balloons are released on Istiklal Avanue during April Fool's day celebrations on April 1 in Istanbul. Some 100,000 pink balloons were used as part of the April Fools' day celebrations by the Beyoglu municipality. Mustafa Ozer/AFP/Newscom

Clowns perform during their traditional march through central Kiev to mark April Fools' Day on April 1. Sergei/AFP/Newscom

Professor Moublanc, the only member of the French General Direction for Alien Research, poses in front of a flying saucer that crash landed in the Space city of Toulouse theme park on March 31. This April fools' prank is how the theme park decided to inaugurate its new exposition called: 'Extraterrestrials, are you ready to meet them?' that opens to the public on April 2 (til the end of 2010). Partially buried, round and damaged by it's landing on earth, the saucer is protected by a fence as the Professor claims to have found 'aliens' inside. Pascal Pavani/AFP/Newscom

A child in a costume takes part in a traditional April Fools' Day celebration in Skopje, Macedonia April 1. Ognen Teofilovski/Reuters

A child in a costume looks on during a traditional April Fools' Day celebration in Skopje, Macedonia April 1. Ognen Teofilovski/Reuters

Workmen remove the mock-up of a large, boxy car, which Mini gave the impression they would introduce as an April Fools' Joke at the New York International Auto Show April 1 in New York. Instead, they introduced the Mini Cooper S Countryman car. Stan Honda/AFP

Samuel Brako (l.), from Ghana, a student of Krasnoyarsk University dressed as a road policeman, listens to an officer's instructions on a street in Russia's Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, April 1. The joke was organized by students of the local university and road police to mark April Fools' Day. Local media had announced the day before that the first trainee from Africa will start work as a road policeman in Krasnoyarsk. Ilya Naymushin/Reuters

Britain's general elections used to be straightforward: a predominantly two-horse race between Labour or Conservative governments, left vs. right, red against blue. But as electioneering gets under way for May 7 polls, it's clear the vote has implications for British politics that extend well beyond whoever comes out on top.